written by Hannah Twery, contributor
photographed by Akash Das, contributor
The electronic dance music and rave scene around Atlanta has grown to be a massive entity in the past few years, and Iris Promotion, the people who helped pull together Imagine Music Festival, has gained a massive following with weekly events like Iris ESP 101 at Rush Lounge. Thus, the two day EDM rave-a-palooza, Imagine Festival, was born. Imagine Music Festival, or #IMF as it’s so lovingly referred to on social media, took place over Labor Day weekend in the Masquerade Music park and beyond. And by beyond I mean along a small stretch of the BeltLine that was beautiful, save for the apartment complexes next door that were probably full of either really excited or really annoyed tenants.
Upon entering the festival you’re bombarded with all of rave fashion’s mainstays: furries, stacks on stacks on stacks of rave candy, new-age hippie attire, neon — the whole schmear. However, there were some things that I had never seen before. Like, what’s up with all these mannequin heads and horse head masks on sticks that people were carrying around? Apparently signs are called totems now (according to the man who saw the picture I took of his Bob’s Burgers themed “totem” on Instagram). And are pasties a la Lil’ Kim at the VMAs in 1999 a thing now?
In terms of music, though, there were some really sick acts on the lineup. Araab Muzik, one of the gnarliest DJs ever, performed on the first day. He mixes right on stage and his fingers move at Mach 10. His big thing seems to be remixes now because he was playing around with a lot of MIA and Major Lazer during his set. Another awesome act was Megan James from Purity Ring. Her DJ set was way different from what I expected. She mixed more underground music than the other DJs, like Die Antwoord and a deep cut from Purity Ring’s first and only album (so far). Other notable acts from the first day included Shwayze (I have no idea what they were doing at an EDM festival), Phutureprimitive, Caspa and a marching band casually walking around playing “Party Rock Anthem.” The best by far was Beats Antique, an American experimental electronica/performance art group that heavily samples Middle Eastern music among other genres to create this sonic eargasm of gorgeous music. The second day had some pretty sweet acts as well like Infected Mushroom, Alan Palomo from Neon Indian’s DJ set, Sphongle and Destroid. Sky Blu from LMFAO performed as well, which I thought was a joke, but apparently it wasn’t.
Coming from a misanthropic ex-EDM fan’s point of view, Imagine Music Festival was pretty gnarly. The music was good, the vibes were good, the location was beautiful, the beer was kind of expensive, but whatever, and the fashion was questionable yet entertaining. I learned a bit about DJs I’d never heard of and I heard some new material from ones I had already known about. I also discovered that many DJs live mix the song “Heads Will Roll” by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, which is totally okay by me because that’s a great song.
According to IMF’s website, there will be another festival next year. If you want to go, act quick because tickets without a released lineup are only $50! And to that I say, I’ll probably see you there in 2015.
